Experienced cost-cutters
Ever since Mondelez, known for Cadbury chocolate and Trident gum, split off from Kraft Foods in 2012, it struggled to hit the ground running. It is underperforming compared to similar companies, which means shareholders are now complaining, forcing Mondelez’ hand.
3G Capital’s budget system – where managers have to build budgets from scratch – looks increasingly interesting as it is a cost-conscious system, which may benefit Mondelez in its aims to get its operational margin to 16 % in 2016. In order to achieve this, it hired Accenture, a management advisor with experience in huge cost-cutting endeavours.
“We’ve watched the work that 3G has done with AB InBev and Heinz – Accenture was the partner with them and we believe they can be of great help to us,” Irene Rosenfeld, chief executive of Mondelez, said. It has managed more synergy than anticipated in the merger between Ambev and Interbrew, while it also shut down 3 Heinz factories with 2,000 jobs lost.
